Fringe Review: Matt Winning: Climate Strange @ Just the Tonic

Dr Matt Winning, a Scottish comedian and environmental economist, is translating the complexities of climate change into a hilarious performance at this year's Fringe festival.

Following a video montage of climate-change-related disasters, accompanied by Dracula-esque music, Winning comes skipping into the room, cheerfully welcoming the audience and throwing around a colourful beach ball. His show is strewn with paradoxical humour – a terrifying statistic regarding our planet’s future before a joke which leaves the audience roaring with laughter.

Climate change data can often be overwhelming, portrayed only in the form of extensive academic reports or complex graphs. Winning reduces these complexities into relatable everyday stories in classic stand-up comedy style.

Winning's performance makes learning about climate change instantly accessible to all audience members, whether they be particularly concerned or not. His struggles are relatable and his frustrations understandable.

The references to his sponsors, and his fabulous slideshow transitions, are particularly entertaining.

Throughout the show, Winning explains that he is on a mission to reduce his share of emissions in order to offset the baby he is planning to have. He describes the various methods that he is using to cut down, sharing these tips with audience for use in their own lives.

So far, he has transitioned to renewable energy in his house with Bulb, joined a campaign to tax too-frequent air travel, and created a petition to ban all new fossil fuel vehicles by 2030.

Winning has done a terrific job of balancing humour with the seriousness of our global situation. Audience members will leave more knowledgeable about the scale of climate change, but not disheartened.